De doctrina christiana is a theological text written by Augustine of Hippo (354–430), a Church Father whose writings had a significant impact on the development of Christian thought and philosophy in the West. In four books, Augustine offers guidance on how to interpret Scripture, advising the reader how to find truth within it, and how to teach and defend that truth. This 12^th-century copy contains a number of large green and red initials filled with geometrical patterns. It is followed by a text on the Holy Trinity (fols 106–10) and a dialogue between ratio and auctoritas (reason and authority, fols 110–123v). Notably, both include Greek words.

The manuscript is one of three surviving books that once belonged to the medieval library of Newburgh Priory in northern England. The other two manuscripts are now in the British Library (Stowe MS 62 and Arundel MS 252).

 

Literature: William H. Gunner, ‘Catalogue of books belonging to the college of St Mary, Winchester, in the reign of Henry VI’, Archaeological Journal, vol. xv (1858), pp. 1–16, 9, n.9; Neil R. Ker and Alan J. Piper, Medieval Manuscripts in British Libraries, Volume IV: Paisley–York (Oxford, 1969), p. 617; Paul Yeats-Edwards, Winchester College (Warden and Fellows’ Library) Medieval Manuscript Collection: Brief History and Catalogue (London, 1978), p. 6; Anne Lawrence-Mathers, Manuscripts in Northumbria in the Eleventh and Twelfth Centuries (Woodbridge, 2002), p. 269; Nicholas Vincent, ‘William of Newburgh, Josephus and the New Titus’, in Sarah Rees Jones and Sethina Watson (eds), Christians and Jews in Angevin England: The York Massacre of 1190, Narratives and Contexts (York, 2013), p. 59 (no. 10).

Provenance:  At Newburgh Priory, Yorkshire, in the early 14^th century; given to Winchester in 1693 by William Emes (1643–1703), Fellow of the College.

Location: Fellows’ Library